


muse

by ineternity



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M, Nostalgia, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Reflection, Sadness, Self-Reflection, Spydoc, Thirsacha, Thoschei, best enemies, do i have them all now, the trial of the author against the endless ship names, thirster - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24135742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/ineternity
Summary: The Doctor finds an old photo album inside the TARDIS. The pages are filled with memories of him- and her- through a rose tinted lens.
Relationships: The Doctor | Theta Sigma/The Master | Koschei (Doctor Who: Academy Era), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	muse

**Author's Note:**

> Loom rights! That is all.  
> (A WIP becomes reality in a rare instance of the author suddenly having a spark of motivation)
> 
> (Sorry about addendum being so slow to update, I'm trying to flesh out a plot plus motivation has really tanked this week. I promise it will be up in the next few days.)

The Doctor is halfway through arranging the wardrobe- by alphabetical order (who wouldn’t?)- when something loosens from the drawers above. The next thing she remembers is the hard steel of the floor and her head pounding what she hopes isn’t a concussion. Whatever it is that had fallen lands with a thud beside her head. It is shoved hastily to the side.

She hisses in annoyance and scrambles upright, raising her leg to kick the offending item. She’s about to boot it into the wall when her brain processes what the item _is._

‘Photo album’?

When had she ever kept a photo album?

Something about the book is familiar though. She has seen it before, not in this life- maybe not in _several_ lives but the binding on the spine is so obviously her own work. The book is ramshackle, big clumsy stitches knit a stack of aged paper and there’s a blot of poorly placed ink on the cover so desperately trying to make its contents appear vintage.

She opens the book carefully to the first page, smoothing over the paper with almost maternal care. It is Theta’s book, precious and odd. The images inside are dark and shadowed in the dim light of the room so it takes a second for the TARDIS to adjust accordingly, shining a small reading light onto the page’s contents.

A curse spills from her, the photos are _him_.

He is the first one in her book. He is always Theta’s first, so consistent, so infuriating.

In the image he is sat, reclining into a chair. It must have been a throwaway, an antique, because the object is draped in a cloth- black and white along with the print of the photo. Koschei shines against the void black behind him, his whole body slumping downwards with the drapes of the fabric yet held up in rigid composure.

There’s a quirk to his lips, slanting, open in a half-smirk, caught in a moment of bliss. Her eyes linger on the junction between his neck and shoulder, surveying the sliver of sun-kissed skin that exposes itself to the lens. She can feel the soft brush of his eyelashes on her neck as they flutter shut, closed so lightly that each long lash only just tickles the top of his cheek.

Her eyes trail down his arm until she reaches his wrist. Slim, bare skin peeks from under woollen, grey sleeves. His hand grips the inside of his thigh, fingers ghosting over tight grey cloth-

She slams the page shut, breath coming in short gasps.

The images that follow are much the same thing: him, her at times and shots taken through the red grasses of Gallifrey, following tiny insects through the undergrowth.

Some of the images are too painful to look at. One moment she is gazing at the roots of a tree, the next she is greeted with snapshots of horrible days and painful recollection.

It’s seven pages later that the camera changes, a sharp transition from monotone to faded pastels and garish exposures. Spread over two pages is a large print, too intimately detailed to stir any meaningful nostalgia from her.

The photo is a wedding she remembers only snapshots of. There are close to fifty figures arranged in rows upon stone steps, gathered around a man and a woman in mock Victorian dress. Each figure wears a polite smile, casting superficially kind eyes toward the camera. She counts them, names them; Ushas, Drax, others she had known on Gallifrey at the time, members of her own house, an officiate from the marriage council dressed in a black robe, even Borusa- who she could see now was casting an exasperated eye away from the camera.

She looks back at the man in the centre of the crowd. He is so young, yet old enough to know that he doesn’t want whatever the House have prepared for his life. Old enough to choose his own name, his own home but not his life-partner.

The figure to his right is stick thin, standing as if he is leaning on something though he holds a tall hat in his left hand. Koschei had been made of paper then, a blow-away ghost with a drained pale pallor. He had still drunk, still retained the cheek in his voice talking to Theta’s father, still laughed with such fervour that they’d be wheezing for breath in an instant.

She looks into his eyes, at the slim smile on his face, like he is daring her even now. Maybe that’s why he had come to her wedding in the first place. The dare of it all, the risk.

It was those eyes, the face that could make her regret anything. A face with such depth framed with such mortality, overgrown locks falling in wavy locks around ghostly cheekbones and shining, wide brown eyes.

The Doctor remembers.

On the next page, there’s a photo of them both still in graduation robes, hanging over the side of a balcony in the Capitol, sun hitting the air around their faces. They had been sober when the photograph was taken but the image says otherwise. Theta’s camera had been ‘vintage’ by contemporary Earth standards so every photo had _appeared_ rose-tinted.

The Doctor flips the page again and nearly flips it back again.

The image is of Koschei and his daughter, the child just a small reaching thing in his arms. A jolt of pain surges to her chest. The tiny body is so fragile against his chest, already broken when she was born- well, loomed she supposes. Over his shoulder is a tall woman, already preparing to leave.

Theta’s family had always included Koschei, Uncle Kosch since Braxiatel had not so kindly declined to involve himself. Uncle Kosch had been there with his daughter, the two of them blending so naturally into the scenery until it wasn’t the two of them anymore, just a man and a shadow.

The memory is too painful. She moves on.

So many photos of fleeting moments, gazes meeting across a scene, hands gripping at each other in the background. They are like secrets, secrets that had been spilt years ago but still stain the book’s brown pages a risqué shade of pink and rose-tint. Warm, warm colours so many years ago.

The album ends abruptly, leaving half its pages bare. She flicks further. There must be closure, an addendum lying somewhere in here.

She finds it quickly.

A final photo sits in the back cover. It’s not from Theta’s camera, the paper is new, freshly printed, freshly glued. The subject reclines almost as if the sun still shines through his eyes, lips parted, eyelids drooped. His eyes aren’t on her but the empty air of the middle-distance, he searches it, furtively looking for an answer to a question neither of them know.

The Doctor does not ask, instead she turns the print over, looking for a snide remark but instead sees only a word.

_Muse._


End file.
